


The Transitive Property of Curses and the Like

by HankTalking



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Gender Issues, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:47:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28544277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HankTalking/pseuds/HankTalking
Summary: A wizard takes on an apprentice. The wizard is not a willing participant in this exchange.
Relationships: Demoman & Bombinomicon (Team Fortress 2), Demoman & Merasmus (Team Fortress 2)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	The Transitive Property of Curses and the Like

“FOOLISH CHILD. YOU HAVE ENETERED THE DOMAIN OF MERASMUS THE MAGICIAN, HERE ON ALL HALLOW’S EVE, THE HEIGHT OF MY POWER, AND- wait actually how did you get in here?”

“Sign said ‘Apply at Castle’,” the girl shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t so much a sign as a tombstone out near the front gate. Other tombstone said ‘help wanted’. Sir.”

The wizard gazed down from where he towered over the youth. His hat, with its own pair of wobbling eyes, gazed down too. “Right, the help wanted tombstone. That is out there. Hm. That is understandable HOWEVER! YE HAVE INTERRUPTED MY DINNER! AND I WAS MAKING A NICE ROUX AND YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE BURNER FOR ONE SECOND IF YOU’RE BOILING MILK.”

The girl tilted her head. “Are you going to curse me now?”

“N- no? I merely saying that COOKING IS A DELICATE ARTFORM AND I AM MIFFED TO HAVE BEEN DISTURBED.”

“I heard that some witches will turn you into a boy if you get on their bad side.”

“…That is a very specific curse to bring up.”

The girl shrugged.

“ANYWAY,” Merasmus the Magician said. “If you are here for the job, then follow me into these hallowed halls, a labyrinth that contains HORRORS YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE! Do not actually set anything on the shoe rack though, I just put that together and the glue is still setting.”

The girl did as she was bid, trailing the magician further into his liar, listening as he talked about how forbidden his tomes were, how ancient his (admittedly very dusty) library was, how some people overused garlic when really only half a clove was necessary, things like that. For the most part, she failed to pay attention, and when she was finally handed a broom it was to her surprise. She watched the wizard stalk out of the room, and began to sweep.

She did a pretty good job too. Although, after a few hours of knocking cobwebs off of old busts and dodging spiders that definitely had more than eight legs, she was getting pretty annoyed with the big bomb book in the corner constantly pestering her.

Reeeaddd meee….

 _Whap._ The broom came down hard on a spider, leaving a sticky green mess. One down, forty-two to go.

Psst. Psst hey kid. Reeaad meeeeeeeeee…

“I know I shouldn’t be rude to the to ancient cursed things,” she finally told the Bombinomicon, “but could you please keep it down? I need to earn this nickel or my Mum will have my hide.”

Just a quick peek won’t hurt…

She sauntered closer. “The wizard said not to…”

Oh well if the wizard said _not_ to-

“And between you and me,” she added quickly before the book could go off on another aggressively sarcastic rhapsody. “You can keep a secret, aye?”

The girl got the impression this book _loved_ secrets, if only so it could blab latter. It squinted its eyes in delight, lowering them conspiratorially and then moved the bomb inside its circular mouth up and down—the closest it could approximate to a nod.

“I’m looking to get another sort of curse already, if you catch my meaning.” She put her hand to the side of her mouth, whispering as she leaned close to the cursed tome.

Uhhh….

“Great, thanks for understanding,” she said as she leaned back, taking her broom with her.

With that, she went back to sweeping. It was another quarter hour before the bomb book spoke again.

Well if you’re not going to read me, how about something else for ‘ole Bombinomicon? You like doing things for money, right?

The girl stopped and put a free hand on her hip. “Lots of people like doing things for money. It’s called being employed.”

What do I know about being employed, I’m a book. Anyway, I’ll give you another nickel if you go down and tell the cookbook on the third shelf that I’ll see her Sunday.

“How are you going to go anywhere Sunday? You don’t have legs.”

That’s evil tome business, not any of yours.

Hm, _two_ nickels wouldn’t be so bad. The girl nodded. “Aye, sounds fair.”

She found her way through the maze of the castle, once again locating the kitchen and approaching a series of shelves towered high with cookbooks. There were quite a lot of them there. She frowned, and figured as long as she got her message out, that counted as holding her end of the bargain.

“Er…Bombinomicon says he’ll see you Sunday.”

Patiently she waited to see if any of the cookbooks would respond. It was a good long wait, which at some point was interrupted with, “WHO DISTURBS MERASMUS THE MAG- oh you’re still here.”

The magician had changed into a pair of rabbit slippers instead of his knee-high fur boots, but other than that was unchanged.

“Wait, what are ye doing in my kitchen?” He glared at the shelf of books. “You are not running errands for the Bombinomicon are ye? I told ye not to gaze upon that bedeviled book!”

“Ach, right. Sorry. Does that mean you’re going to curse me then?”

“What is with ye and the cursing? Seriously mortal child, are ye alright?”

The girl shrugged, which was often what she found herself doing in these situations. “Finished with the sweeping,” she informed him. “Anything else need doing?”

“FOOL! This is a magician’s castle! There’s always something that needs doing.” This last sentence was accompanied by the pinch to bride of his nose, and a weary sigh.

* * *

Merasmus was right—there was a lot to get done in the castle. There were boxes of various dead animals to sort (DO NOT TOUCH THE ZOMBIE FUNGUS SAMPLES, MORTAL. IT IS EXACTLY AS THE NAME IMPLIES) the hellhounds chained in the back needed to be fed (THEY ARE ACTUALLY QUITE GOOD BOYS, SO LONG AS THEY DO NOT RECEIVE SUSTANANCE AFTER THE WITCHING HOUR), and the thousands of glass beakers in the alchemy lab needed to be cleaned thoroughly (THIS ONE JUST PLAIN HAS LEAD IN IT). All in all it was a good few days of work and the girl’s pocket grew heavier all the while; Mum would be quite pleased when she came home. Or at the very least, not as mad as usual.

“You there!” Merasmus said one morning as she walked into the kitchen. She had taken to sleeping in the library (there was a book there on pyromancy that made her back nice and toasty if she put it on the bottom shelf and curled up next to it) so she was not used to seeing the magician this close to daybreak. “Mortals require sustenance!”

With that he scraped off a large portion of eggs onto a plate. “Aye, thanks!” she said as she clambered into the chair the plate had been placed in front of.

Merasmus watched her for a little while. “You. Do you not need to…I don’t know. Go to school at some point?”

“I’m seven,” the girl said around a bite of eggs. Apparently the magician did not know if this was a confirmation or a denial, so she told him, “I do need to practice my bomb making though. Da’ll be disappointed if I don’t keep myself sharp.”

“Bomb making,” Merasmus asked suspiciously. “…And you _haven’t_ been reading my Bombinomicon?”

“Not a word sir!”

“Then I suppose that is alright then. Wait. What am I saying of course it is not alright. Do not build bombs in my castle!”

“They’d just be practice bombs, sir. I won’t blow up your nice castle, I promise. You’ve given me a lot of good jobs and a lot of good breakfasts so I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Merasmus peered at his unintended guest. The eyes on his hat couldn’t squint, but it looked like they were doing their darndest.

“I’m training to be a demowoman,” she explained. “At least that’s what Da says. I think ‘demowoman’ just has too many syllables though, you know? And it just calls attention to the fact. Like, I don’t need someone pointing out I’m a woman every time they call on me, you hear? So I think I’m just going to call myself a demoman and trim the fat.”

It had all come out a little fast, and to be honest the child hadn’t even meant to say all that. Hadn’t even told Da yet about the demoman thing. But Merasmus didn’t press further, just cocked his head. “Very well. You may…continue your studies?”

“Aye, thanks Mr. The Magician sir. Say, you got any grain dust lying around?”

“…No?”

“Ach, that’s alright. Pretty sure I saw some potassium chloride while cleaning out the alchemy lab.”

* * *

Despite Merasmus’s various warnings, the castle steward actually preferred building the practice bombs inside the library, in full view of the Bombinomicon.

Ahg no!!! You use that much and you couldn’t blow up a cat, much less a cow!

There was the usual promises and melodramatic temptations, but a lot of the time the Bombinomicon let tips and tricks slip through born simply of frustration. The demo thought it was a very clever way to game the system.

The two were good friends by this point, so it was hard to say—on that fateful day, one week after Halloween—if it was truly betrayal that unfolded those events. Maybe the book’s siren’s call finally won through, and the Bombinomicon had the last laugh. Maybe it the smallest bit of faulty advice that set of the explosion that took the left side of demo's face, maybe it was nothing but a simple mistake (the thing that had cost the demoman a set of parents not a year ago). No one knows but the two spirits present, and with one bleeding profusely out the side of the head, Merasmus did not ask as he stormed into the obliterated library and stood over the child there.

“Fool,” was what demo heard, but it was not enraged, even as scraps of paper fluttered down as ashes from above. “Foolish thing.”

There were the press of fingers against a burning face, then the lessoning of pain even as demo slid into unconsciousness.

“You have destroyed my library,” the slowly fading voice of the wizard said. And it was mournful, terribly mournful. “For this, I shall curse you.”

That was the last thing the child heard before waking in an empty field.

The castle was gone, the whole moors wiped of its existence, and the person who had gone in was changed along with it. Looking down, demo was found to be well and truly cursed, from head to toe and back again. A smile sprung over bloody lips, even with the numbness that had taken the left side.

Sure demo's skull had one last eye, and there would be some explaining to do at home, but this tiny little demoman was fifty cents richer and a thousand jobs happier.


End file.
